Video surveillance systems are found in businesses, schools and homes all over the world. The vast majority of these systems are wired systems in that the video data is transported from the camera(s) to monitoring station(s) via wires or cables. Some of these systems are even connected to the Internet to allow remote viewing. In a known system, the wired cameras can be remotely monitored via the Internet as long as the IP address and port numbers are known and the firewall is setup to allow the monitoring IP address to view the video feed.
While this kind of known system serves a definite security purpose, there are many limitations. For example, law enforcement or other first responder personnel arriving in response to an emergency do not have direct external wireless access to the wired video on the internal wired network. Wireless Internet access in emergency vehicles cannot be counted on in the current state of the network infrastructure, so even if the system is Internet connected, the video still may not be accessible to the emergency responders. If direct wireless access were available, the first responders could react to the situation with increased safety and efficiency.
In addition, for events outside the boundaries of a wired surveillance system requiring temporary surveillance, wires need to be laid to link up wired cameras to the surveillance monitoring location. An example of such a use could be a school with an internal wired video surveillance system. In situations where additional outdoor monitoring would be desirable (for example, athletic events or an outdoors field day), the setting up of wired video monitoring locations to extend the video surveillance coverage can be laborious and costly.
Mesh networks are known to be used in a wide variety of applications. For instance, mesh networks have been known to be used for construction, healthcare, higher education, networked communities, public safety, security and surveillance, warehousing and wireless service delivery.
As is known, mesh networking is a way to route data, voice and instructions between nodes. It allows for continuous connections and reconfiguration around blocked paths by “hopping” from node to node until a connection can be established. Mesh networks are self-healing: the network can still operate even when a node breaks down or a connection goes bad. As a result, a very reliable network is formed which allows peer network nodes to supply back haul services to other nodes in the same network.
Nodes may be connected to peripheral devices such as video equipment for video surveillance purposes. A known implementation of a video node for wireless mesh networks is provided in commonly-assigned U.S. Pub. Pat. App. no. 2006/0176834, entitled “Video Node for Wireless Mesh Network,” filed Feb. 7, 2005, which is incorporated by reference herein for all purposes.
With the advent of mobile wireless communications, users may have the ability to receive video feeds from hundreds or thousands of sources. These video sources can be fixed or mobile just as the receiver of video feeds can be fixed or mobile. As more and more businesses extend their wired surveillance systems to provide wireless access to police and private security teams, the number of video sources could number into the thousands of units per city. Hundreds or thousands of video sources within a city can be overwhelming to a video receiver (law enforcement officer, private security, etc.). The problem is how to select the video source of interest quickly. A related problem is how to select the video source from the residence or business alarm system that has just triggered. Accordingly, a simple way to reduce the number of video sources is needed, as well as a technique for initiating an alert to a viewer, and emphasizing that alert.